Dawn's Mall Adventure
by mistymidnight
Summary: Buffy and Willow have to drag Dawn along to the mall with them. This can only lead to panic and confusion…


**Title: **Dawn's Mall Adventure

**Author: **mistymidnight

**Rating: **PG, as usual, to be safe. There's really nothing offensive in here.               

**Disclaimer: **In the woods of a remote South American country, there is a temple of Joss. Bow down to it. A few feet away is the temple of mistymidnight. Dogs use it like a fire hydrant. Got that visual? Okay, now think about the metaphor there.

**Spoilers/Timeline: **Season two, I guess, no specific time or spoilers.

**Summary: **Buffy and Willow have to drag Dawn along to the mall with them. This can only lead to panic and confusion…

**Author's Notes: **I was thinking of something a salesperson said to me and my friends as we tested massage chairs at the mall, and this idea just popped into my brain. To Kitty and Co. (that would be my best friend and all her buddies, not a little kids show like it sounds). Finally, revenge upon the evil salesguy!

        For some reason, my tab key is moving the text all the way to the right margin. This is very strange. Just thought I'd mention it.

        "Are we there yet?" Dawn asked, sitting in the back seat of Willow's parents' car.

        Buffy swiveled around and gave her little sister a cold look. "Yes. Now shut up."

        Dawn sulked. "Just because things didn't go your way and you had to take me with you doesn't mean you have to be crabby."

        Willow gave her friend a sideways glance, trying to keep one eye on the road. "Why is this such a big deal to you?"

        "This is why," Buffy said. "Dawn, what stores do you want to go to?"

        "The Disney Store, KB Toys, the pet store, Toys 'R' Us, and the Meditation Corner."

        "Why the Meditation Corner?" Willow asked.

        "She likes to try out every single one of the massage chairs.  Every. Single. One."

        "Oh."

        "Listen up, Dawn," Buffy commanded, turning around to face Dawn again. "We are going to the Banana Republic, Macy's, Charlotte Russe, Neiman Marcus—"

        "Blah, blah, blah, bo-ring," Dawn said.

        Buffy looked like she was about to say something, but she was interrupted by Willow's overly cheery "We're here!" She found a parking space and led the bickering Summers girls through the parking lot to the mall. The first thing they did was go to Macy's. The second thing they did was listen to Dawn complain.

        "I have to pee," she whined, crossing her legs and jumping up and down. "I have to pee right NOW."

        People were beginning to stare. "Fine," Buffy said, not able to tear herself away from the pair of boots she was trying on. "Go to the bathroom and come STRAIGHT BACK."

        "Okay," Dawn replied, hopping off in the direction of the ladies' room. Once out of sight of Buffy and Willow, she stopped hopping and looked around. Then she smiled. The ditch had been successful. Now where to go? Well, the pet store was just around the corner. Dawn smiled and strolled off in that direction.

        After playing with puppies and kittens for a few minutes, Dawn became bored. There's only so much ooh-ing and ahh-ing one can do over kitties and puppies, no matter how cute. Dawn decided to go to KB Toys.

        She walked in and headed straight for the Polly Pockets aisle. Unlike Barbies, it was cool to have Polly Pockets these days. Dawn especially wanted the light-up supermarket. It had moving "automatic" doors, one of those little-kid ride things supermarkets all seemed to have, a moving conveyer belt, a Polly-mobile with an opening and closing trunk for groceries, a little Polly grocery cart, and an upstairs café.

        She was so caught up in this miraculous Polly breakthrough that she didn't hear the saleswoman come up behind her. "Are you lost, sweetheart?"

        Dawn turned around to face her. "No."

        "Where's mommy?"

        Dawn scowled at the fact that people that weren't herself or Buffy still refered to Mrs. Summers like they were her children, too. It irritated her. "My mom's at home."

        "Who are you here with, then?"

        "No one. I'm forty-three, lady. I can drive. I'm just a midget. Bye."

        Dawn bolted out of the store, making a mental note to come back for the Polly-Mart when Mrs. Nosy Saleslady was off duty.

        She headed for the Meditation Corner.

        "Buffy, shouldn't Dawn be back by now?" Willow asked, casting a glance in the direction she had last seen Dawn at. "It's been twenty minutes."

        "Twenty minutes?" Buffy screeched. Several shoppers turned to stare. "She's been gone twenty minutes?" she asked, a little more quietly. "She could be anywhere! She could be dead or kidnapped or vamped or…"

        "Calm down, Buffy," Willow said soothingly. "We'll find her. We just have to find a security guard."

        They set off in search of a fine law-upholding citizen. They found one patrolling the mall corridor outside Macy's.

        "Can you help me?" Buffy asked. "We're looking for my sister. About yay tall, long brown hair, annoy—uh, friendly?"

        "Is she in any apparent danger?" the guard asked.

        "Huh?"

        "Was she taken by force?"

        "I don't know. She's lost. As in unfindable."

        The guard frowned at her tone. "Unless it's an apparent emergency, we can't get involved."

        Buffy got right up in the guard's face. "What do you people consider an emergency? A donut shortage?"

        The guard stared down at her. "Miss, would you like to be escorted from the premises?"

        "I think I already made it clear what I wanted. I want to find my sister. And you never answered the question. What do you consider an emergency?"

        "Kidnapping, mugging, robbery, things like that."

        "Be honest. How many kidnappings do you see a day? Or at all?"

        "I haven't yet come into account with anything of that nature."

        "Whatever." Buffy turned around and walked away, flipping the finger at the security guard, who luckily didn't see, and muttering, "I have a feeling you see a lot of things of _that_ nature, too."

         "So the security guard was a bust," Willow said. "We'll have to find her ourselves. What stores did she like?"

        "The Meditation Corner!" they both exclaimed, and set off.

        "Ahh-hhh-hhh-hhhh-hhh," Dawn said, her voice garbled by the vibration of the chair.

        "Miss," a man's voice said behind her, "please get off that chair if you're not going to buy it." It figured. The one time she could sit in the chair, she was told to get out.

        "How do you know I'm not going to buy it?" she asked. "_I_ don't even know if I'm going to buy it."

        "If you're not going to buy it, don't sit in it."

        "Well, I don't _know_ if I'm going to buy it. How can I if I don't test it first?"

        The salesman got all huffy and glared at her. "Oh, fine," she said, getting up and walking to the door. "I'll take my business—and my bulging wallet—elsewhere." She called to an imaginary person just out of the salesman's vision scope, "Mom, tell Winston to bring the car around. We're trying someplace else." With an evil grin at the salesman, she turned and flounced out.

        Buffy and Willow came running up to the Meditation Corner, bumping into a salesman and each other. "Have you seen—?"  Buffy began.

         "Young girl, long hair?"

         "Yes!" Buffy cried. "Yes, that's her!"

         "She went that-a-way," the salesman said, pointing toward the mall center. "Let me just tell you, she has one heck of a personality."

         "Don't I know it," Buffy mumbled, already on her way to the mall center. "Thanks!"

        Willow and Buffy finally caught up with Dawn as she rode the merry-go-round in the mall center. The nearly tackled her once she got off.

        "I'm tired," she said. "Can we go home now?"

Yes, a hasty ending, but I was getting sick of the lack if tabs key function. It's really annoying.

mistymidnight


End file.
